Once again Thursday divided the MySweetCharity forces, so we had this report filed from the field: The Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society‘s February meeting on February 21 at the Dallas Country Club included insights and surprises putting the spotlight on the area known as Culture Gulch, smack dab at the headwaters of Turtle Creek on Amherst near Thackeray.

As a surprise special guest, Jerry Bywaters Cochran, daughter of Jerry Bywaters, world renowned artist and former director of the “Dallas Museum of the Arts,” gave an overview of her first-hand remembrances of her father, renowned artist, Jerry Bywaters, and his travels and paintings and growing up in these enriched surroundings.

Sam Ratcliffe, head of Jerry Bywaters Special Collections at Southern Methodist University’s Arts Library, spoke about how the families of Jerry Bywaters, Lon Tinkle, Ed Bearden and Dr. John Chapman built their homes

Lon Tinkle, SMU grad who later returned as E. A. Lilly Professor of Literature at SMU, author of Thirteen Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo, which was published in 1958 and won two awards. In 1960, he served as historical adviser for the movie The Alamo starring John Wayne and was later the Dallas Morning News Book Reviewer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lon_Tinkle

Taylor Armstrong, a Park Cities architect, land planner and consultant, as well as a two-time president of Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society (renamed since the merger of the two societies: Historical Society and Preservation Park Cities in 2006) spoke about the architects of these homes, Arch Swank, O’Neil Ford and Todd Dale – how these notables are worthy of discussion in their own right and their collaborations and friendships with all of these families.

The homes are all still standing and their history is a testament to these cultural pioneers in Dallas in the later 1940s, ’50s and beyond.

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